In the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time considering so-called “walking simulators,” first as I dug into different definitions of games, and then, as I moved away from that, into perceptions of games and the experiences they offer. One of the games that comes up most often […]
Alisha Karabinus
185 posts
I’d like to pick up a small part of last week’s discussion on games, narratives, and experience, as the idea of environmental narrative bled into my seminar papers this semester as well. If we want to think about games as a matter of being – as in, what happens when we […]
Last week, Austin Walker wrote about endings over at Waypoint, focusing not only on literal game endings, but also on letting go. Preparing to return to the world can be a challenge, certainly; I’ve never come back from Trumbull Valley, for instance. But sometimes it’s all too easy to leave […]
I spent a lot of time looking at diversity in State of Decay and its re-release, from actually counting and coding bodies to considering the feeling of a game driven by the kinds of characters who don’t normally lead stories. Results were mixed; the game, while much stronger than many […]
We got an e-mail last week about good games with troubling elements — so, basically, all games. But the question was: how do we choose the right way to handle games with problems? We have to play the games to understand them, and we want to support devs who are […]
Many games, particularly smaller indie games, present limited experience, and these limitations can manifest in myriad ways. Firewatch takes place over a single summer. Depression Quest is all text, with text options denied as its driving mechanic. Reigns is a series of yes/no decisions. Some games, though, ask you to […]
Last week, I was at an academic conference, presenting on a game I and a colleague created for classroom use. It’s a big conference, and I got to listen to a lot of very smart scholars hold forth on all the things I’m interested in, from first-year writing to games […]
Last month, I wrote about Reigns, the Tinder-influenced game of decisions, in which players take on the role of a monarch and lead a nation through a dynasty of successive rulers. Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about the game, about what the interconnected internal structures mean, and what […]
Recently I was updating my CV, because I’d been putting it off, of course, while things piled up, and when I was done I marveled at how much space was dedicated to collaborative items. If I was in the sciences, that wouldn’t be anything out of the norm, but it’s […]
Exploratory adventure games, narrative adventures, spatial adventures, environmental adventures, narrative explorations—different, certainly related phrases, all used to describe games that rely heavily on exploration to craft an experiential story. Walking simulators often overlap heavily here, but with games like Her Story, for instance, there’s not much (or any!) walking, so we needed […]
This week, whenever I’ve logged into Steam, I’ve seen the big ad: Cozy Couch Co-Op Bundle! It’s a cute one, with characters all piled onto a couch. Everyone’s got a controller, even the bomb from Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. The message is clear: gaming brings people together, and it’s […]
Reigns, released late last summer, situates the player as king of an ancient kingdom, located somewhere faintly European, somewhere in the early 7th century. But you’re not one king; you are all kings, a long-reaching dynasty of king after king, each taking up the crown upon his predecessor’s fall. The […]
For the past few semesters, I’ve been playing text adventures once or twice with my students (9:05 and Zork). For most the format is completely unfamiliar—typically, I have one or two students who’ve at least heard of text-based games—and they struggle with the step-by-step commands. Look. Open. Take. Read. It’s […]
This week, I was re-reading Donna Haraway’s “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perception,” and I had one of those revelatory moments that come only when you’ve read something a million times already, when you have absorbed and understood it and are free to […]
I’ve written before about our household habits of creating multiplayer where there is none, specifically in State of Decay, but my husband and I often find ways to share single-player experiences. I was thinking about this earlier this week, as we were yelling Stardew Valley tips at each other across […]
Late to the party, or valley, I plant crops months after everyone else. I water parsnips, consider sprinklers, plan optimal placement for trellises. I buy cows. I resisted Stardew Valley for so long, but now it’s the first place I go when I have a moment to myself. This game […]